Sylvia Plath

This strange note fell out of an old paperback collection of her poems. It came from a house in Fortune Green. Oddly enough the 'professor' mentioned in the note wrote a book about his experiences and the 'channelled' poems. Sylvia Plath-Last Encounters (Bedford 1989)

Sylvia Plath lived in Fitzroy Road, Camden Town in a house where W. B. Yeats had lived. She and her children occupied two upper floors and the ground floor was occupied by a close friend of D & B. He was a hypochondriacal and unhappy person, at this time in deep trouble. One night Sylvia Plath knocked at his door pleading for help. Our friend in his own misery turned her away. This was the first time they had met. The tragic sequel is well known. A day or two later our friend rang us in at Keats Grove in a state of acute indignation because the woman upstairs had gassed herself and his flat was filled with gas which made him ill. (The gas came down so that the children on the top floor were not affected.)
Our friend seemed to be totally unmoved by the Sylvia tragedy except in relation to himself _ but a few days later he told us of strange personal happenings. He would wake in the night, his mind filled with words of poetry which he felt compelled to write _ the first poetry he had ever written.